Some people seem to be getting a bit lost with MCR, so I wrote a tutorial to help people get started. See after the break to read it.

Oh, and I should have mentioned this a few days ago – the rest of the entries into the contest are up. There are almost 50! Check them out here! I was going to put together a post with some of my favourites like I did with the B-Games, but as I’m taking part it’s probably not a good idea. After the contest it might be a nice thing to do, though 🙂 I’m just sorry that I could only vote for three games!

I should also mention that I’m working on an update for my entry, which I feel was a bit rushed. There are a few very crucial things I didn’t have time to add that I really want to see in the game, and I’m hoping to reduce the amount of “tweaking” required to play the game and make it more political/combat focused. This will mean some major changes, though, like completely changing how unit production works and reducing the number of countries down to 4 or 5. I’m also going to change the share buying bit to work in intervals of 10% and give your siblings 10% to start with, so that aspect should be significantly downplayed. And of course, the Mind Control Rockets will be taking more of a centre stage 🙂 It’s not really that much work – the hard part is done, so it shouldn’t take much more than a week to put together. Oh, and I’m still planning on writing that “bloggy catchup post” that I’ve been promising since the new year…

Anyway, the tutorial 😀

Tutorial:

Background:

You control one of five gifted siblings, and your goal in the game is to eliminate the other four so that you can take over the world. You do this by building up mighty robot armies and fighting them in RPG-style battles. At the start of the game, you hold a 5% share in each of the seven country’s resources. To get the resources to build up your army and take out your siblings, you need to buy more shares in each country and use your resources to create oil, metal, plastics and machine parts, which you use to build troops.

Building Units:

You start each turn in your floating fortress, which gives you an overview of your global financial situation. The first thing you’ll want to do is buy some shares, so click the bottom right hand button (which will say something like “Visit Moscow” or “Visit Cape Town” depending on where you are) to go to the city.

On the city screen, click “Visit Stock Market”. You’ll see a breakdown of the stock market in this country. At the start of the game, you’ll own 5%, your siblings will own 5% each, and the local government holds 75%. The share price is based on the current state of the economy and how much the government owns – in addition, if you’re playing as Adriana, it’s divided in two. Buy some shares. This will cause the economy in the country to increase a rank. (You can only do this once per turn.)

Ok! The next step is to use your shares to create resources! Click “Return to City” and then “Visit Industrial Sector”.

To create anything, you need money, oil, metal, plastics and machine parts. The amount of “resource points” corresponds to your share in the local stock market – anything you don’t use you sell, so you effectively make money by not using your resource points. How much you make depends on (a) the current economy (You make $1m per point in a “Chaotic” economy, but $7m in a “Roaring” one), and (b) the local tax rate.

Click the left and right arrows beside each resource to adjust how much of it you produce. Oil and Metals are simple, but to produce Plastics, Machine Parts or Chemicals, you need to produce some materials locally. For example, to create 1 unit of Plastic, first produce 5 units of Oil, then you’ll be allowed to produce the plastic. (note: I’m going to simplify this in the update 🙂 )

Repeat this for each nation (you can change your location on the fortress screen), and try to get a balance of producing resources without going into debt.

Controlling Nations:

Over time, all economies go down and countries destabilise. You can keep track of what’s happening in the “Check News History” and “Check Country Data” options on the fortress screen.

When a country destabilises enough, militia groups will begin to intercept your resources. The easiest way to stabilise a country is to invest in it – i.e. buy shares – but you can also use Mind Control Rockets to do it.

To build Mind Control Rockets, you first need to research them (this will happen automatically within your first 10 turns). You need 5 metal and 10 chemicals to build each one. To actually use them, you need to own some sort of media outlet in a given country, which you can buy in the “Media Market”. Buying a media outlet increases your influence, which impacts how powerful your suggestions are.

Once you own a media outlet and at least one mind control rocket, you can select the “Plant Suggestions” option from the city screen. Simply select what effect you want your suggestions to have, and your media outlets will begin broadcasting a suitable message. Your mind control rockets will trigger it.

You can stabilise a country by decreasing fear, or boosting the economy. If you actually want a country to destabilise (which can be useful to amassing human troops or buying cheap shares), you can do that here too. You can also use this to reduce taxes and scrap troublesome laws.

If a country destabilises enough, talk to the president about dissent. He’ll offer to give you some human troops in exchange for dealing with it for him. (If you’re Joseph, this is basically the most effective way to build up an army).

Combat:

Every 50 turns, like clockwork, one of your siblings will attack you. To be ready for your first attack, I suggest either having over 1000 of any unit type, or over 500 of two different types.

You can build units in the “Military Actions” screen on the fortress (once you’ve researched them). They all cost the same and do the same base damage – the difference is in their strengths and weaknesses. Zig Fighters are effective against Mecha Units, Mecha Units are effective against Killbots and Human Troops, and Killbots and Human Troops are effective against Zig Fighters.

The actual battles work by assigning targets for your robots. You can assign one target per turn – if there are still troops remaining after your units have attacked, they’ll keep the same target – if not, they’ll lose it.

There’s some other stuff, but I’ll leave that for you to discover. I think I’ve rambled on long enough. You can stop reading now 😛

Disclaimers:

The game was pretty rushed, and I didn’t have time to add a lot of things that I wanted to. In fact, I barely made the deadline. As a result, a lot of game elements are underpowered or totally unnecessary, and the balancing is way off (it’s too hard at first, and not hard enough later on). The good news is that I’m working on an update that will (hopefully) fix a lot of these problems! I should have more details on that later on today. I really think there’s potential for a fun game here, but right now it’s got some serious issues. Regardless, I hope you enjoy playing it!

3 thoughts on “Mind Control Rocket: Tutorial”
  1. I thank you for making this, and ALL of your other games. I’ve spent hours on both this and self destruct. I’ve beat both over a dozen times. Please keep doing what you do and doing what you love.

    ~D

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